Cosmic Crisp highlights a bumper crop of apple cultivars

Smitten, EverCrisp, Snapdragon, RubyFrost, Topaz, SweeTango, Rave, and Cosmic Crisp—these are only a few of the newer apple varieties challenging shoppers to buy them in supermarkets.

Many of the recent introductions to the market count Honeycrisp, the preferred choice for many consumers, in their lineage.

However, predictions from the New York Times and Seattle Business magazine say Honeycrisp’s celebrity status may diminish once Cosmic Crisp becomes available for the first time this season.

Will the predictions come true? Will this year’s crop be abundant or plagued by ill-timed weather events? Find out what growers and marketers think this year’s season will bring in our apple series in the next week from Blueprints.

A Cosmic event
The Cosmic Crisp, a product of Washington State University’s exemplary tree fruit breeding program, shares many of the same attributes as Honeycrisp, since the latter, along with Enterprise, provided its DNA.

According to its website, www.cosmiccrisp.com, this apple ranks among the largest in size, has a firm and crisp texture, a sweet yet tart flavor, and doesn’t brown as fast as other apples when cut (though it shouldn’t be confused with the nonbrowning Arctic apple, a genetically modified variety, produced by British Columbia-based Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.).

Harvest has just started, and it begins shipping to retail stores throughout the country in December.

According to Proprietary Variety Management, the global intellectual property group handling Cosmic Crisp, growers expect to ship 450,000 boxes this season, 2.1 million in 2020-21 and 5.2 million boxes in 2021-22. Projections go as high as 20 million cartons in the next few seasons.